Supporting Collaborative Creativity with Educational Visualizations in 3D Virtual Worlds

Social media are known for substantial creativity support, as they allow users exploring, creating, and sharing various types of content. Social 3D virtual worlds, such as Second Life, can also be seen as a social media that have wide possibilities for being creative. In this paper, we explore how 3D virtual worlds can support creativity in educational settings, including creativity of the collaborative process and creativity of the outcome projects. We propose that this technology can support both. In order to test this proposal, we used the data collected in a case study that we conducted within Cooperation Technology course at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in 2011. The study was supported by the EU research project CoCreat. The data are discussed to present the challenges for supporting collaborative creativity with 3D virtual worlds, approaches to understanding the concept of creativity, and our experience in creativity evaluation.